HEI - Project for Hamburg Anstiften

Hi, with a couple of friends we are proposing the HEI project (see rough details below) to the Hamburg Anstiften initiative Protected contentIs somebody interested and willing to join the group?In the case, please drop me a line.Ah, and obviously comments on how to improve the project are very welcome.Bests,Alessandro

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HEI – Help Expatriates to Integrate

Hamburg has a lot to offer and attracts continuously people from all over the world. The better those persons integrate in the local reality, the most the society could benefit from them and the most those expats enjoy living in Hamburg.

HEI is a volunteering service made by people for people: our aim is to facilitate integration, to explain local reality, to show possibilities and opportunities, to provide contacts and human support when expatriates need it the most, at the beginning of a new journey. For sure public administration as well as embassies and consulates are there to accomplish the same function but often, too often, those entities are perceived as far and distant, far too bureaucratic and not flexible enough to cope with everyone's needs. HEI aims to leverage on existing public services to get in touch with newcomers, to have the possibility to organize bi-weekly meetings in which a substantial Q&A session is coupled with a generic presentation of different national and cultural integration perspectives in the Hamburg reality.

Our volunteers are long course expatriates able to give tips and to link original and indigenous realities, to discuss the problems they faced when they arrived here, the differences they found and how they managed to settle down in the area.

The process is envisaged to run as follows:

1. HEI partners with existing public offices and expats community to create a qualified mass of initial volunteers

2. Newcomer register at the public office (Anmeldung)

3. Public officer hands her a leaflet from HEI defining the supporting services offered and incoming meetings for his national/cultural background